That adds to the expanding Washington footprint for Palo Alto-based VMware and its parent company, EMC. They also staked out territory in Seattle with the February acquisition of Pi , a move that put Pi founder and ex-Microsoft bigshot Paul Maritz on track to become VMware's chief executive earlier this month.

VMware told the World that it's going to use the computing capacity for reseach and development.

Gadgets and games | Fun stuff I've written about lately includes Apple's iPhone, Hewlett-Packard's HDX laptop and Microsoft's Halo3. Also on the radar are new digital video boxes such as the Tivo HD and the Vudu.